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The World's 10 Dirtiest Cities
neever writes "You may already know about the pollution plight of Linfen, China. But how about the heavy metals Pittsburghers breathe in on a daily basis? Or the incomparable smog Milanesi put up with? PopSci has culled an eye-opening selection of some of the world's most problematic cities. From the painfully high cancer rates in Sumgayit, Azerbaijan to the acid rain destroying La Oroya, Peru, writer Jason Daley walks readers through the lowest of the low; and explains why, despite it all, there's still hope for these places."
I don't know which cities are listed as the Popsci servers seem to be down, but a couple of weeks ago flying out of Los Angeles, the pollution seemed pretty bad as can be seen in this picture of the afternoon sun over the San Gabriel Mountains.
From some of my other travels throughout the world, I am guessing that L.A. is not even close to how dirty some cities can get particularly in Russia. If the air is worse than it is in L.A., then it should really, really make you worry.
Visit Jonesblog and say hello.
Air pollution is a liberal myth that is propagated simply to prevent the glorious libertarian utopia that results from the pure beauty of unrestricted capitalism.
While reading the title of this article, my interest peaked just before I realized that by "dirtiest", it was actually talking about dirt.
Property is theft.
It may not be a city, but New Jersey deserves at least an honorable mention.
/. seems to be turning into digg with all these 'worlds #' topics...
Portland, Oregon.
Highest percapita strip club concentration, and legalized live sex shows. And while not all the ladies shave, pretty much all of them are down.
Server is already /.ed?
Anyway, I live in one of the minor million-plus cities of Japan near Tokyo, and I just want to note that you can have a high-tech, high-quality lifestyle without destroying your environment. Whenever I hear a story like this, I think about running into quail the morning, almost literally. They are sometimes foraging within a few feet of the gate, and they figure people are basically harmless to about 3 meters. There's a little river two stations up, and it's heavily populated with half-meter carp. I walked about half a kilometer along it the other day, and there were almost always fish visible, and sometimes scores of fish. It's a matter of priorities, I think--but I was annoyed a couple of years ago when they cut down a pretty large bamboo grove and built a bunch of houses there...
Not sure of all of the reasons, but I feel like good mass transit is a big chunk of it. Heavy recycling probably helps, though they recently increased the garbage collection taxes quite a bit.
Freedom = (Meaningful - Coerced) Choice != (Speech | Beer^2), and sad sock puppets' bad mods avail them naught.
Forbes rated it (Pittsburgh) in the top ten cleanest cities:
:/
http://www.forbes.com/2007/04/16/worlds-cleanest-cities-biz-logistics-cx_rm_0416cleanest_slide_16.html?thisSpeed=30000
I hope this link works for you guys
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Ay! I've just signed myself up for four years of university in Pittsburgh. Anyone know a good method of limiting heavy metal exposure in such an environment.... Wait... Why would I want that?.. I'll be IRON MAN!
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Pittsburgh is a very different city than many Americans picture. There's only a small part of the city that actually has the pollution levels cited in the study. Steel and coke works have given way to robotics and medical research. Disclosure: I am finishing a graduate degree at Pitt right now. I may be biased, but I do hope a new study is done that covers the city as a whole.
It would be nice to find a list of all major cities ranked by their pollution level. I would be curious to see NYC vs London vs Paris vs Tokyo vs Beijing.
The first time I visited Beijing, I was frankly shocked that life can exist in this environment. I'm in Beijing again right now, and have just gotten used to the idea that you need to budget some time each morning to hack up gunk from your lungs. I'm less than 1 kilometer from the forbidden city at the moment, but can't see it. I know it's there, because a rainstorm earlier this week cleared the air enough to see that far.
Great city once you get past the air though...
Check out Guangzhou, China. I've been there several times and never seen a clear day there. Though I hear Xian is worse.
Who said Freedom was Fair?
It works like this:
The main reason Coal is being used to produce electricity rather than say Nuclear, Wind Power and Solar is price. Coal is cheap. If you impose a carbon tax , however, forcing companies that emit a lot of CO2 to pay for it, then that will make electricity generation from coal more expensive, and thus hopefully cause electric utility companies to build nuclear power plants, wind turbines, and solar panels, instead.
The idea is that you integrate the environmental cost of pollution into the market system, thus forcing supliers to take environmental concerns into consideration when making business decisions. Now, while flat out taxation is one way to achieve this, it is very difficult to determine how much to charge for a given amount fo environmental damage, and this is where tradeable emission permits comes into play. Rather than taxing companies directly, what you do is you decide how much of a certain pollutant we can emit without causing major trouble, and then you auction it off to highest bidder. That way you force the market to adapt to a lower emission scenario, and the price adjusts itself according to normal market principles. With time you can then reduce the "acceptable" level of emissions as technology improves, periodically reducing the amount of pollution.
The catch is of course that this WILL have negative effects on other aspects of the economy. The important thing to realize is that this is not some new negative effect the government has created, it is a price that we were previously paying in terms of environmental damage. What tradeable permits do is to limit the extent to which manufacturers can impose that cost on everybody, and instead put it right down where it belongs , with the consumers that use goods and services that generate pollution during their production. Yes, I said consumers, not companies. Manufacturers will on pass the cost to the consumers, in the form of higher prices, and this will in turn reduce demand.
"Oh but you can tax as much as you want people still want to drive their cars... blah blah blah...". This is why you use tradeable permits rather than direct taxation. Tradeable permits outright forces the market to adapt meaning prices will increasethe UNTIL they are high enough that demand drops. When it comes to goods that people consume a lot regardless of price ( such as gasoline ) this trabnslates into a large price increase. When it comes to things you can eaisly replace with other things, the increase in price will be smaller.
The real problem is that the cost of CO2 is really really large. Emitting it causes major damage to the planet, curtailing it causes huge costs to the environment. There isn't an easy solution to this, which is why a number of peopel prefer sticking their head in the sand and deny the whole thing. I am seriously very sceptical to weather the necessary measures will be taken. People won't put up with a 3 fold increase in energy prices ( which is where wind power is relative to coal and nuclear ) so if we hope to get rid of coal it would appear that unless we get a sudden breakthrough in solar, only Nuclear has a chance to save us. Somewhat ironically, the most hardline environmentalist groups oppose it almost religiously, and thus it woudl appear we will be stuck with coal for a long time.
1. In Norilsk the soil around the city is so polluted that it's economically feasible to mine it for nickel.
2. There is an alternative list with more information and better research from the Blacksmith Institute: The World's Worst Polluted Places. (However, it contains Europe's biggest de facto nature reserve as one of the most polluted places in the world (Chernobyl exclusion zone))
Those who would give up liberty to obtain working drivers, deserve neither liberty nor working drivers.
Dzerzhinsk FTW!
:(
Dioxin and phenol levels 7 orders of magnitude above the safe limit, an annual death rate exceeding the birth rate by 260% (life expectancies: M=42, F=47) and generally more soviet era chem-weapons-chem than you can shake a mutant-whatever at.
The wiki doesn't really do it justice...I saw the BBC doco once, and it was appalling. There's a `pond' so choked with chemicals that it appears to have a consistency closer to foam rubber than water, and a huge pit in the ground with hundreds of barrels of toxic waste spilling out the top of it. It's hard to believe that people actually live there. Truly tragic.